Carbon neutral means finding ways to balance actions that are potentially harmful to the environment with positive ones.

The goal, for businesses and individuals, is to shrink their carbon footprints and become carbon neutral--or, better yet, carbon negative. The concept means they remove at least as much carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide or CO2) from the atmosphere that they add from the use of technology, manufacturing, travel and other activities.

Here's how it works. If you add polluting emissions to the atmosphere, you negate them by purchasing "carbon offsets." Carbon offsets are credits for emission reductions achieved through ventures like wind farms, solar installations and energy efficiency projects.

Carbon neutrality has gained cachet in the commercial real estate sector, where both brokerage firms and many of their clients are embracing environmental stewardship. Last summer, BOMA International challenged CREs to improve energy efficiency across their portfolios by 30% by 2012.

It described the Market Transformation Energy Plan, which includes a 7-Point Challenge to improve energy management, as an aggressive but realistic strategy to reduce the use of natural resources, non-renewable energy sources and waste production in commercial buildings. It urges the industry to reduce its use of natural resources, non-renewable energy sources, and waste production, and work in coordination with building management, ownership and tenants.

BOMA International chairman and chief elected officer Brenna S. Walraven describes the challenge as too important to ignore. "If we can collectively succeed in reducing our energy consumption by 30%, we'll save $7.2 billion and remove 120 billion pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions from the air, which is the equivalent of removing 12 million cars from the roads. It's a challenge we can't ignore," she explains.

Walraven says real estate companies and organizations are using the 7-Point Challenge as both a call to action and a template for developing sustainability programs and improving energy performance. It has already been endorsed by Carr Services, CB Richard Ellis, Colonial Properties Trust, Cousins Properties, Cushman & Wakefield, Glenborough, Hines, LBA Realty, Opus, Parmenter Realty Group, PM Realty Group, Stream Realty Partners, Transwestern and USAA Real Estate Company, as well as BOMA local associations in Austin, TX; Boston; Cleveland and Columbus, OH; Dallas; Denver; Detroit; Houston; Miami; New Mexico; New York City; Orlando; Philadelphia; and Oakland-East Bay and Orange County, CA.

Real estate firms seem committed to carbon neutrality. Just this month in New York City, Jones Lang LaSalle CEO Colin Dyer was a featured speaker at the Economist Conference's first forum on corporate sustainability. He discussed the role real estate and facility strategies play in environmental sustainability, as well as trends companies can capitalize on to achieve, measure and chart the success of their environmental programs.

Businesses are already building carbon neutral campuses, planting trees to balance their carbon emissions and launching other environmental initiatives.

• Denver-based ProLogis made history last year when it became the first real estate company in the world to join the Chicago Climate Exchange. The exchange is the world's first and North America's only voluntary, legally binding rules-based greenhouse gas emissions reduction and trading system. Prologis is also the first US real estate company to issue a sustainability report in accordance with standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative, a non-profit organization sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Programme.
• The US Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Houston-based Transwestern for the past four consecutive years for its efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through energy management. Transwestern is also a member of the US Green Building Council and has 50 buildings nationwide registered under the LEED for Existing Buildings program.
• CBRE. announced plans last May to become carbon neutral by 2010 and develop a plan to assist clients with energy efficiency programs within the 1.7 billion sf of space it manages worldwide.

Carbon neutrality is a significant issue for many companies, including Baxter International Inc., a pharmaceutical firm, which created a carbon neutral headquarters in Deerfield, IL. And interest in it seems destined to grow. Work is underway in New York City on the city's first carbon-neutral building, a $12.5 million, 8,000 sf property on the East River at 23rd St. Known as the Solar 2 Green Energy Arts and Education Center, it is scheduled to open next year.